In the current age, the use of fossil fuels is falling under increasing levels of scrutiny both due to dwindling supply and looming "net zero" deadlines. While nuclear energy is certainly a possible source of renewable energy in the future, the claim that "In the future, nuclear energy is the best possible energy source for Australia" seems to be an opinion of many in the space, and warrants investigation. By comparing nuclear energy options to the best options that are currently implemented, a comparison can be made.
Other energy sources currently implemented, such as hydroelectric energy, do not directly compete with Nuclear energy. Biomass in particular is limited in growth by the rate of biomass waste generated by industry (EIA, 2024). Therefore the scope of comparison is limited to the most abundant and fast growing energy sources that directly compete with nuclear.
| Energy Generation Technology | Current Share (%) | Current Annual Growth (%) | Average growth over last 10 years (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solar Photovoltaic (PV) | 27.3% | 21% | 27% |
| Wind | 20.4% | 7.8% | 14.7% |
| Biomass |
32% | 3.9% | -0.4% |
| Hydro | 10.8% | -2% | -0.9% |
Table 1: Current share and growth of select energy sources in respect to total renewable share (Australian Government, 2023).
Solar PV demonstrates the second highest share in electricity generation, and is currently the fastest growing renewable energy. Therefore it will be the basis of this comparison.
Energy generation requires investment at many stages during a piece of infrastructures life cycle. Contributors to cost will be discussed. The cost per unit of energy produced should be considered as cost of living is a major issue in some parts of Australia (Potts, 2024).
Critical sectors like healthcare and agriculture rely heavily on the grid, in addition to the millions of Australians who have improved quality of life because of it. If one technology demonstrates a increased reliability, this is a significant advantage.
Looking towards the future, the waste product of each technology must be considered. These will accumulate during generation, and at the End Of Life (EOL) period of a piece of infrastructures lifespan. If one technology shows significant advantages and becomes the dominant power generation infrastructure, the long term impact of it's materials and processes must be considered, just as they were in the case of fossil fuels (DCCEEW, 2025).
Is nuclear energy more sustainable than Solar Photovoltaic (PV) in terms of cost, reliability and long term waste production?
Initiating construction of electrical generation infrastructure is a capital intensive process. For a project to be successful, the money spent during construction and operation, and generation must be lower than the total revenue generated by the infrastructure over its lifespan, and additional profit margins.
Since the sum of costs are recuperated over the lifespan of the infrastructure, comparing them against the sum of energy generated by the plant allows an average cost per unit of energy to be determined. This is known as the LCOE (Levelised Cost of Electricity) for that installation, and is usually measured in dollars per watt hour (
The CSIRO's GenCost report calculated, and predicted LCOE's for a number of technologies from the years 2024, to 2050, allowing for direct comparison of said technologies (Graham et al., 2024).
Figure 1: Calculated LCOE by technology and category for 2024 and 2030 (AUD) (Graham et al., 2024).
Clearly solar PV demonstrates the lowest LCOE, which is currently 0.16
This is likely due to higher capital, or setup, costs for nuclear options.
The U.S Department of energy's "Capital Cost Estimates For Utility Scale Electricity Generating Plants" further breaks down these capital costs. Financing was estimated to increase capital cost by an additional
(Leidos Engineering, LLC, 2016). The cost of large scale nuclear in Australia is currently predicted to be
The cost of uranium fuel in America was 0.46 cents/
(World Nuclear Association, 2020)
The largest capital costs in solar PV systems are the mechanical and electrical systems, and equipment. The procurement and instillation of these components account for
Solar PV installations are generally less expensive, and take less time to construct. This translates to lower financing fees, and an overall lower LCOE. The current capital cost of large scale solar PV in Australia is
Solar PV's 'fuel' is sunlight, which is a free resource. While land usage scales with capacity, solar PV installations generally are have lower owner costs with respect to the total cost of the installation. Owner costs cover development, property, and other miscellaneous factors (World Nuclear Association, 2024).
What is reliability?
Reliability is defined as "The ability of a system or device to carry out it's desired function under predefined circumstances for a certain amount of time" by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (Obatola, 2024).
Availability is also a key factor in assessing a systems reliability. It is expressed as a fraction that describes a component or systems operating time in respect to its total lifetime. (Sayed et al., 2019)

Figure 2: System availability versus system size shows negative trend. P50 (red) and P90 (black) quantile values shown.
"Availability and Performance Loss Factors for U.S. PV Fleet Systems" by Chris Deline et al. considered availability data from large scale solar PV systems up to
"Availability factor of a PV power plant: evaluation based on generation and inverter running periods" by Kumar, N. M., et al. considered inverter uptime in a 1000
The main contributor to the lowering availability was considered inverter modules, at
System availability is affected by all components in the series from the PV modules to the grid. While considering a single component alone, the entire system's availability cannot be properly gauged
Nuclear infrastructure faces many of the same challenges in reliability and longevity as solar PV.
IAEA's Power Reactor Information System (PRIS) is a database of statistics regarding the construction, operation, and capacity of global nuclear energy infrastructure. Extrapolating availability from their public dataset gives a global median of
This is significantly lower than solar PV systems, which seems unlikely due to solar PV relying on occasional daylight to function. However nuclear plants must abide by more stringent safety protocols, therefore more time is spent on both restorative and preventative maintenance as it must be carried out with greater frequency and meticulousness.
For a 1000
Furthermore, the output of nuclear facilities is larger than the solar PV infrastructure discussed by a factor of a minimum of 100 times. Considering the decreasing trend observed in availability factor as scale increases, solar PV is hypothesised to have a lower
Waste generated from electricity generation is generally in the form of solid waste such as aluminium, concrete, and glass, and greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) like
The waste generated by solar PV systems is approximately 1.7-2
This is well below the internationally accepted limits of 50g of
Waste generated by nuclear plants is much higher in density. A 1000
What remains constant though is the hazard and lifetime of spent fuel. Fission products such as strontium-90, and cesium-137 have half lives of
Due to the density of the water and the inverse square law, the spent fuel is able to decay and release heat without causing harm before being sealed in a steel and concrete containment vessel. Overall this produces 110
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